Premier Zhu Rongji’s environmental legacy

On Aug 12, 2026, Mr. Zhu Rongji passed away at the age of 98. He was China’s premier from 1998 to 2003. Though he served for only one term, he is widely regarded as a highly consequential head of the government for the People’s Republic. In fact, Prof. Hu Angang of Tsinghua University, an influential […]

The old tea forest that kindles China’s ecological imagination

Upon entering the wooden house of a Blang family, one is immediately struck by the presence of enormous, dried seed pods suspended from the beams. Often as large as a child’s arm, these pods originate from a plant known in English as the St. Thomas bean. For the Blang people, an ethnic group living in […]

Solid waste incineration: from devil to hero?

There are not enough garbages to be burned by the country’s fleet of Waste-to-Energy (WTE) incinerators, a viral video circulating on Chinese social media proudly declared recently. The high-temperature and high-tech furnaces are so powerful and efficient that they have more than resolved the urban waste challenge that once was a headache for governments worldwide. […]

The women in China’s environmental history

On June 11th, Professor Tang Xiaoyan of Peking University passed away at the age of 93. In the days following her passing, environmental scientists, advocates, and policymakers around the world honored her extraordinary career as one of China’s foremost atmospheric chemists and a pioneer in the nation’s atmospheric pollution research. Below, I have included a […]

Interview with Dialogue Earth on China’s unique brand of environmentalism

This article was originally published on Dialogue Earth by author Lin Zi under the Creative Commons BY NC ND license. China announced its dual carbon targets in 2020. If you had turned the clock back 30 years to 1990, you would have found yourself in a country beset by environmental crises. In the early 1990s, […]